“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Article 1

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Senator Whitehouse called on all
Americans to remember that the Constitution provides not just basic
rights, but a mechanism to make sure that those rights cannot be
trampled by wealthy and powerful interests:

"The jury
serves as our last sanctuary, as Americans, when the forces of society
may be arrayed against us: when the governor’s mansion has been bought
by special interests; when lobbyists have the legislature tied in knots;
when the newspaper owners have steered public opinion against you – the
hard square corners of the jury box stand firm against the influence
and money of special interests."

"In the Supreme
Court’s Citizens United case, a slim 5-4 majority allowed giant
corporations unlimited license to drown out the voices of American
citizens in our elections. To give you a sense of the scale of this
threat to everyday Americans’ role in our democracy, presidential
candidates Obama and McCain spent a combined total of slightly more than
one billion dollars on their campaigns. In contrast, Exxon Mobil had
sales of $89.8 billion and profits of $19.4 billion the year the
Citizens United decision came down. Corporate giants now have the
ability to influence our electoral system like never before."

"Big corporations
can now dominate the executive and legislative branches through campaign
spending and lobbyists. But there’s one annoying little place their
money and influence can’t reach: the jury box. Indeed, tampering with a
jury is a crime. Wealthy and powerful interests take little joy in the
jury’s role safeguarding “the sovereignty of the people,” and don’t much
like the notion that “oppressions” even by the “most powerful” can be
“examined and decided by twelve indifferent men.” (And nowadays, women.)
So it is not for nothing that, in recent decades, corporate interests
have embarked on a sustained effort to weaken the civil justice system
and diminish the role of the jury.

From a
historical perspective, there is no question whether corporations or the
jury has a richer constitutional pedigree. The Founders did not
consider corporations to be “citizens” of our democracy."

Lobbies Rule America

Supreme Court Decisions on Corporate Power

William Blackstone once said “the most powerful individual in the state will be cautious of committing any flagrant invasion of another’s right, when he knows that the fact of his oppression must be examined and decided by twelve indifferent men.”

The jury is particularly important today, as powerful corporations encroach ever further into our political system. As corporations use their great financial assets to lobby their own legislative agendas and ply their influence on even the executive branch of government, the jury stands as a sanctuary for justice for the American people.

Judges at all levels work daily to ensure that the court system protects the rights of everyday Americans. As a grassroots movement to protect the rights of “human persons” in front of our court system, we need to make clear that our judicial system must continue to offer a forum for all people, not just special interests, to seek justice.

But in the Supreme Court’s Citizens United case, a slim 5-4 majority allowed giant corporations unlimited license to drown out the voices of American citizens in our elections.

There have been over recent years many Pro-corporate Supreme Court decisions. In Supreme Court cases below it is easily demonstrated how these legal precedents can do great damage to the rights of everyday Americans, minorities, the elderly, consumers, the middle class, the environment, and even to established law.

For examples of how the Supreme Court decisions have eroded the rights of “human persons” see these important Supreme Court Decisions:

The right to a jury trial - Rent-A-Center

The Supreme Court in the Rent-A-Center case has diverted working Americans away from a jury by forcing them before an arbitrator. In Rent-A-Center, for example, the Court stopped American employees who work under binding mandatory arbitration agreements from challenging unfair treatment by their employers in court. Americans, the slim majority held, cannot even go before a court to challenge an unconscionable arbitration agreement.

Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 129 S.Ct. 1937 (2009), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court held that top government officials were not liable for the actions of their subordinates absent evidence that they ordered the allegedly discriminatory activity. At issue was whether current and former federal officials, including FBI Director Robert Mueller and former United States Attorney General John Ashcroft, were entitled to qualified immunity against an allegation that they knew of or condoned racial and religious discrimination against individuals detained after of the September 11 attacks. In this case the Supreme Court overhauled the long-settled standard for what an injured person must allege in a complaint to get a case to a jury. In 2007, the Court had handed down its opinion in Bell Atlantic v. Twombly. The Twombly case had previously set the civil concept of “plausibility” as the dividing line between complaints that do and do not state a claim. In Ashcroft v Iqbal, the Supreme Court held that top government officials are not liable for the actions of their subordinates absent evidence that they ordered the allegedly discriminatory activity. The heightened fact pleading standards, as required by Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, was extended to all Federal court cases. So after Twombly and Iqbal, these higher pleading standards will mean that American workers will all have a harder time winning legal cases about corporate wrongs.

In the largest employee class-action lawsuit in U.S. history the Supreme Court ruled that the case would not go forward as a class action suit. This was a major victory for Wal-Mart Stores and the case had been potentially worth billions in damages to the plaintiffs. As many as 1.6 million female employees from Wal-Mart were included in the sex discrimination case. Instead the court agreed unanimously that the litigation could not proceed as a class action form. This Supreme Court Decision reversed a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The court split along 5-4 lines over whether the group presented a common claim in seeking an injunction that would have forced the retailer to change its employment practices.

The right of small businesses to compete with the big business - Leegin antitrust case

Consider the Leegin antitrust case, where the 5-4 majority on the Court reversed many decades of precedent that had kept prices low for consumers, and had helped small businesses compete with corporate giants. The Supreme Court in this decision overturned nearly a hundred years of antitrust precedent in a groundbreaking 5-4 decision in Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. PSKS, Inc. The decision over tuned a previous decision which made it per se illegal for a manufacturer and its distributor to agree on a minimum price at which the distributor may resell the manufacturer’s goods.

The right of victims of environmental disasters to obtain adequate compensation - Exxon v Baker

See the Supreme Court Case Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker, 554 U.S. 471 (2008). This Supreme Court decision took the opinion that the punitive damages awarded to the victims of the Exxon Valdez oil spill should be reduced from US$2.5 billion to US$500 million.

Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 550 U.S. 618 (2007), is an employment discrimination decision of the Supreme Court of the United States. Justice Alito held for the five-justice majority that employers cannot be sued under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act over race or gender pay discrimination if the claims are based on decisions made by the employer 180 days ago or more. Lilly Ledbetter found that she had been paid less than her male counterparts year after year despite working just as hard, Ms. Ledbetter brought suit against her employer. A jury heard the evidence in the case, found that the big corporation had indeed discriminated against Ms. Ledbetter, and awarded her back pay and damages. Then the corporation got the case before the Supreme Court. The conservatives on the Court decided to take the decision away from the jury.

In Gross v. FBL Services, a 54-year old man claimed that his employer had discriminated against him because of his age. A jury agreed. Again, the corporation turned to the Supreme Court. And again, a narrow majority of Justices overturned the jury decision – in the process making it more difficult for older Americans to prove they were wrongfully discriminated against on the basis of age.

"Never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself." Confucius

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who
points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds
could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is
actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and
blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and
again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but
who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms,
the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at
the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who
at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so
that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who
neither know victory nor defeat."

Theodore
Roosevelt- Excerpt from the speech "Citizenship In A Republic",
delivered at the Sorbonne, in Paris, France on 23 April, 1910

Medical Whistleblower Commitment to Non-Violence

Medical Whistleblower has a commitment to improving the protection of all civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights as defined in, among others, the following regional and international legal instruments:

• UN legal instruments pertaining to human rights, including: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the international covenants on civil and political rights and on economic, social and cultural rights; the conventions providing for monitoring mechanisms (torture, racial discrimination, discrimination against women, the rights of the child, rights of migrant workers and their families); and the conventions and standards of the International Labor Organization;

• Special procedures and non-treaty mechanisms of the United Nations;

• The Declaration on Human Rights Defenders;

• The UN resolution establishing the mandate of the Special Representative of the Secretary General on human rights defenders;

• The United Nations guidelines on human rights defenders;

In addition, Medical Whistleblower upholds the principle of a code of ethical and moral conduct that all means used by Medical Whistleblower will not include violence - We exclude the use of violence to advance political aims. We work with and in collaboration with existing governmental structures and systems but put pressure on governments in a non-violent manner to achieve human rights protections and goals.

"The human voice can never reach the distance that is covered by the still small voice of conscience."

“When we call anything a person’s right, we mean that he has a
valid claim on society to protect him in the possession of it, either by the
force of law, or by that of education and opinion”

John Stuart Mill

"The adversarial system of justice is by nature unfair and unjust. It favours the strongover the weak. It accentuates social and cultural differences, favouring the rich whoare able to engage and pay for the services of one or more layers."

Justice MinisterMadame Guigou, 1999

“Everything that is done in this world is done by hope.”
―Martin Luther

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“The most powerful individual in the state will be cautious of committing any flagrant invasion of another’s right, when he knows that the fact of his oppression must be examined and decided by twelve indifferent men.”

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But still I am one.
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But still I can do something;
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― Edward Everett Hale

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Vietnam
Veterans of America, Crisis Phone Number. Special
Notice: If you are a veteran in emotional crisis and need help RIGHT NOW, call
this toll-free number 1-800-273-8255 available 24/7, and tell them you are a
veteran. All calls are confidential. http://www.vva.org/.

Veterans’
Crisis Intervention Hotline: 1-888-899-9377.
A Crisis Intervention Hotline has been established by the VA Heartland Network
to assist veterans who may be dealing with a mental health crisis or difficult
issue in their lives. The hotline will also aid family members or friends of
veterans who need help in assisting a veteran in crisis.

Safe Harborincludes links to find medical doctors (by zip code) who can assist with helping people safely get off of psychiatric drugs and medical personnel who will treat people without the use of psychiatric drugs.